This is a picture of their tomato transplanter. It takes 15 people on the transplanter and a tractor driver to plant the tomatoes. This was a really neat rig. It planted 14 rows of tomatoes per pass. On average, they could plant 50 acres of tomatoes a day. This farm raised over 600 acres of tomatoes.
This was the tomato harvester. There are roughly 10 of these in the US. It takes 12 people to operate the machine plus 1 tractor driver to pull the machine and other drivers to pull the bulk tomato bins.
How did these folks learn to raise tomatoes, you might ask? Well, just the way anyone learns to do something....ask someone who already does it. They take their personal plane and fly to California to learn from other tomato producers. Dad and all the sons have their pilot license.
I didn't get any pictures of any irrigation rigs on any of the farms, but there was also a lot of discussion of water management. This farm had 95% of all the farm under irrigation. They not only grew 600 acres of tomatoes, but also grew cucumbers, green beans, seed corn, waxy corn, and soybeans. It is amazing the variation of crops grown in that area versus down here in southern Indiana where it is primarily corn and soybeans.



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